EU-backed initiative aims to enable textile circularity by developing high speed, AI-driven sorting at scale.
AMSTERDAM – A new European Union (EU) backed project has been launched in a bid to crack one of fashion’s biggest bottlenecks to circularity by industrialising the automated sorting of used textiles.
The three-year Horizon-funded ‘Sort4Circ’ project aims to develop an AI-driven system to identify, trace and prepare post-consumer textiles for high-value recycling at scale.
It comes as Europe grapples with 12.6 million tonnes of textile waste annually, with just 22% of post-consumer textiles separately collected for reuse or recycling and the rest largely landfilled or incinerated.
With mandatory separate collection and new EPR schemes looming across EU member states, partners say existing manual sorting capacity is far from ready for the surge in volumes. Running to December 2028, Sort4Circ will focus on four core work streams:
- integrating AI-driven computer vision into sorting to distinguish items suitable for reuse from those fit for recycling
- boosting textile traceability through secure, digital tools such as tokenised RFID tags and digital product passports
- delivering ‘recycling-ready’ feedstock that meets the technical and economic specifications of advanced recyclers
- quantifying technical, environmental and economic performance to build a bankable business case for automated sorting at scale
[...]